No love lost during epic Phils-Sox series

AFTER ALL THE HYPE about how Phillies and Red Sox diehards would be at each others' throats during last night's game, Broad Street Billy was shocked to find peace - even love - breaking out all over the ballpark.

Carla Trinca-Conley (Jacoby Ellsbury jersey), of Buffalo, N.Y., and Taylor Brauns (Roy Halladay jersey), of Doylestown, met as University of Pittsburgh students during the Phils' final out in last year's National League Championship Series, when Trinca-Conley noticed "that he was about to cry," and told him so.

Brauns couldn't say why he found this strangely attractive.

"Probably," Trinca-Conley suggested, "because not a lot of girls talk to you that way."

"See?" Brauns told Billy. "This is what I have to deal with."

MARCHING-BAND LOVE: Matthew Lucci, of Wallingford, Delaware County, met Eugenia Sims, of Western Massachusetts, while playing alto sax to her trumpet in Boston College's marching band. Guess who's the Sox fan?

Sims took pity on Lucci when she saw him "crying in the dining hall" after last year's NLCS.

"Even afterward, she warned me not to get too attached. It's like that scene in 'Fever Pitch,' where Drew Barrymore tells Jimmy Fallon something like, 'You give your all to this team but the team won't love you back.' " Sims does a wicked good Drew Barrymore.

ASHBURN ALLEY CHOKING: Amid all the love between Sox and Phils fans as the Phillies were rolling to a 5-0 win, Broad Street Billy suddenly noticed Ray DelVecchio (Cliff Lee jersey) choking Pete Curran (Josh Beckett jersey), and shouting, "It's Julius Erving and Larry Bird all over again! Only this time, Erving wins!"

David Berger, of Overbrook, who was photographing the violence, said, "I didn't get a good one. Can you do that again?"

Curran, of Nashua, N.H., DelVecchio, of Audubon, Montgomery County, and Berger have been friends for years.

Berger's to blame for throwing the first snowball at Santa Claus during that notorious Eagles game, Curran and DelVecchio said.

Berger decided to "come out of the closet about the snowball" on WIP in the winter of 1999, after a buddy tipped the station off.

"Before I admitted it," Berger said, "my dad said to me, 'As a Jew at Christmastime, maybe you don't want to be announcing that you're the guy who threw the first snowball at Santa Claus.' But it was time to come clean.

"I was only 16 at the time," Berger said in his own defense. "A guy handed me a snowball, pointed at Santa Claus and said, 'Hit him.' So I did."